GUILDWARSINSIDER

So with the necessity of character wipes before launch, all of us will be required to start over again. With that in mind, I thought it might be a good idea to re-evaluate my initial choice of race (Human for my Elementalist) by looking at all the options. After all, each race seems to have quirks and abilities that make it unique, and maybe that should be a factor in deciding what race to go with!

Option 1: Choosing By Abilities

Choosing your race by skills is generally not advisable. While I didn’t get to test out all 5 race’s skills personally, my research and experience suggests that these racial abilities are underpowered in one form or another. Whether it be by cooldown, damage or general utility, the skills don’t make as big an impact as most of our Elementalist abilities would. It is also worth noting that you cannot use racial skills in structured PvP. There are a few gems in here though. If you’re town between two races then maybe looking at the skills could be a good tiebreaker! To reiterate, however, reference the picture below.

• Asuran skills revolve around marvels of science.

  • The Utility Skills are actually not especially useful for Elementalists because they apply conditions that we generally don’t have much synergy with (such as Confusion, Poison, Weakness, and Daze).

  • The Elite Skills work much better with the Elementalist, being combat summons instead of direct skills. These golemns that you summon (of which you can pick an attack golem, tank golem, and an Iron Man suit) can easily be replaced with the Glyph of Elementals (which has a longer up-time anyways), but you may prefer the look of the Asuran models.

• Charr skills don’t revolve so much around the marvels of science as much as they revolve around the technological advancements of war.

  • The Utility Skills are actually generally not useful, and you’ll find better Elementalist-specific skills to use. You might pick up Battle Roar for some leveling burst damage, and that wouldn’t be a bad choice.

  • For Elite Skills, the Charr have some terrifically aesthetic choices. The Charrzooka has a pretty good up-time for a racial skill, and it does decent damage. Warband Support is something I just would stay away from. The two summoned Charr do very little damage and are not even useful as meat-shields. Artillery Barrage actually does some good damage, but a 4 minute cooldown is a really high price to pay for that.

• Human skills are very…what’s a good way to put this? Religious? I guess that would be the only way to put it! Every skill involves a prayer to one of the human Gods for help in combat.

  • If all you care about is pure, unadulterated healing (is there any other kind?) the Prayer to Dwayna is a healing skill that actually seems a bit overpowered right now. Assuming that it doesn’t get nerfed into the ground at some point, this skill might actually be worth taking.

  • Human Utility Skills are actually the most useful of all the races, from my comparisons. They only have two (because the third is a healing skill) and both provide excellent effects based on boons and conditions. Prayer to Kormir removes 3 conditions from you, while Prayer to Lyssa grants you a random boon and applies a random condition to the target enemy. These are great skills, especially since Elementalists don’t really have that much condition removal (unless you keep Signet of Water on your bar all the time and never use it).

  • Elite Skills are a bit “meh,” just like everything else. Hounds of Balthazar are about as useful as Warband Support is for Charr (which is to say – they’re not, though they look a whole lot cooler), while the Reaper of Grenth doesn’t give as good effects as our TORNADO does, while accomplishing a similar function but with different conditions. The Avatar of Melandru skill actually looks like it has the potential to be even more of a game-changer than Tornado, what with its Protection buffs, condition removal, and healing to allies, but only in PvE situations, such as dungeons.

• The Norn are awesome. Just wanted to get that out there. All of their skills are animal based, and revolve around either summoning or transforming into various animals!

  • The Norn Utility Skills are Call Owl and Call Wurm. Call Owl was actually really useful for a first-tier skill, and I found myself using it a lot. Call Wurm actually didn’t find its way onto my bar at all because of Call Owl!

  • The Elite Skills…what is there to say? They turn you into a half-Human and half-Bear/Raven/Snow Leopard/Wolf. Cool for roleplay purposes, but they’re not useful enough to use them in combat over the Elementalist elites.

• Sylvari skills…I’ll be honest, I’m saving the Sylvari for launch as not to ruin it for myself. I couldn’t very well leave them out of the article though! With that said, just know that the following information is based on reading, watching, and asking, not by actually testing them myself.

  • Healing Seed appears to function like the Engineer’s Healing Turret, in that there is an initial burst of healing followed by continuous stacks of Regeneration.

  • For Utility Skills, Grasping Vines looks very useful to Elementalists, or any profession in general. It’s a first tier skill, costs only 1 Skill Point, and as of the last beta weekend applied Bleeding and Immobilize every 1 second that the vines haven’t been destroyed. Great for escaping, great for CC (Crowd Control). The other Utility Skill is another turret. Hmm, strange. These plant people have a knack for creating turrets. The Seed Turret itself has a ridiculous range of 1500, and with that comes 1500 range for stupid, stupid turret AI. These things attack everything within range, not just what you’ve engaged in combat.

  • Looking at Elite Skills, of which there are 3, it seems that Take Root is the most useful directly. It spawns 2-5 Seed Turrets after immobilizing you for 3 seconds. I’m going to have to bring this up at the next AETA meeting; we’ve got to watch out for these Sylvari… The issue with this skill is that once again turret AI is ludicrously stupid. Once the turrets spawn, they attack everything within range. The two summons look powerful, especially Summon Druid Spirit. The Druid Spirit could be a huge boon in dungeons because of it’s support capabilities, supplying Regeneration and taking conditions while rooting enemies.

VIP Option: Choosing by Race Flavor

Honestly, this is the route you should go when choosing your race. I’m sure most of you have picked a race already because of how cool it looks, or because of something you saw in a video somewhere. That’s awesome! Go play that at launch! But did you look at the other races too? When I first heard that Charr were going to be playable, I thought that I was going to roll nothing but Charr. We would be a herd, and would travel the land, lighting things aflame! I did some research into the other races though, and decided that at some point I want to play as every race.

Each race has something special about it – that’s one thing that ArenaNet has done very well. Asura are super-snarky, egotistical, and short…if you’re into that kinda thing. Charr are all about duty and ferocity. The Norn are an impulsive physically and emotionally, and are self-driven. Humans are resourceful and have almost a caste-like cultural system. The Sylvari act as a giant family, and their general naivete is almost comical. Each race is a gem, and while the personal story of every character will eventually lead them against the Elder Dragons, the journey of the races is what makes it fun and special.

For What It’s Worth…

So even if my words here haven’t swayed you in any particular direction, what race do you plan on your “main” being? I’ve gotta go with Sylvari for my Elementalist, and Charr for my Engineer! What helped you make that decision? (ProTip: If your answer is, “Asura, cuz they short, yo!” then at least attempt to phrase it better than that!)

I’m so excited for the launch later this month that it is all that I can do to sit around analyzing each race, picking out names, and deciding what I’ll see and do first. Race and name choice is worth some thought before launch. Once we’ve made these characters, they’ll be with us for a long time. Sure, you can delete them and start over, but your experience with that character is a memory, and those things are forever!